Flight Identification of European Passerines and Select Landbirds An Illustrated and Photographic Guide

When you first get onto a bird there is a high chance that it will be flying, and you will have a few seconds to lock onto its main plumage features. Every ID guide I have focuses on perched birds with a smaller image of them in flight – and in some books you don’t even get that! This new book takes the reverse position, and it’s all about the flight view.

This book covers 237 species including a number of vagrants. The author and artist are both Polish and therefore some of their species choices reflect a bias towards the birds that they usually see at home, such as the northern form of Long-tailed Tit that rarely reaches the UK. But that is not really a problem. Many of the species are either diurnal or nocturnal migrants and this is stated for each, which is something that I had not given much thought to. The text for each species covers size, structure and shape, colouration, flight, and calls. These texts are quite short but are concise and convey the information you really need. Birds in flight often call so the accompanying information on vocalisations is useful and is sometimes accompanied by a sonogram.

For me, Tomasz Cofta’s illustrations are the real draw – all 850 of them, showing the upperside, underside and side-on flight views. In real life, you don’t get these perfect views of birds, but that doesn’t matter because there are 2400 photographs as well and they give more typical views of birds in flight. The layout of images is impressive, even though it is created using digital manipulation. Most of us with cameras struggle to take decent flight photos, so the fact that Michał Skakuj contributed 851 of his own shots is really impressive.

I rarely read the introductory pages in a book, but in this case, they are important as they explain the terminology used and the main things to look for. Many birders do what is called vis-mig (visible migration) and they will be familiar with how different species fly in a certain way in certain conditions. For example, some species fly in a different way on migration compared to short-distance flights. These differences are explained. There is also a link via a QR code to recordings of the flight calls of some species (although you’ll need to know the scientific names of those you are looking for).

The publishers have described this as a cutting-edge book, and it certainly is a first of its kind. Even if you don’t plan to use it extensively in the field there is something rather special about looking at images of birds in flight as if you are flying with them!

I received this book a few days ago and have to report it as one of the most useful, targeted books on ornithology I have ever purchased. Clear objectives and equally clear comparative diagrams and photography highlight differences and features quickly so that even the comparative novice can attempt to start to make valid identification of those many more similar European birds we all struggle with when in flight or at difficult angles, even distance. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to do exactly what it states in the title and identify European passerines. I congratulate the author on reducing a guide that will no doubt be so well used it will fall to pieces over the coming year. Well worth the price of the title.

This book is so clearly the fruit of a lifetime's systematic observation, it fills one with joy. It gives excellent descriptions and drawings of the individual birds. But perhaps even more important, it gives the birder a simple, straightforward method and a language that he or she can apply to move from ill-defined jizz to well worked out characteristics. This in turn will make jizz more instinctual, because it has been articulated and the bird observed in detail.

The Wild Guide publishers have produced yet another hugely innovative and class-defining book – a bit like their Britain's Spiders second edition seems to come close to perfection for what a field guide should look like. The illustrations are very clear and accurate. The photographs are well selected to show a range of views one might encounter of the bird in real life.

There are always minor quibbles with a book of this ambition and uniqueness. But it is a truly remarkable work, one that deserves the title landmark. I suspect like better cameras led to more photography of birds in flight rather than just perching, this book will change the way many birders watch and observe. And I suspect this change will be a slow-burner, and all the deeper for it, as the method and the concepts are better and better absorbed until they become part of one's instinctual observation.

It is a truly remarkable work, one that will surely rank with such hallowed names as the Collins Bird Guide. And it is a treat to handle and use. Thank you, Tomasz Cofta, and thank you, WILDGuides, for giving us a whole array of valuable new tools, and for doing it in such a pleasurable and easy to grasp way.